Skyrim is a vast world with many wonderful things. So many wonderful things in fact that our characters can’t help but pick them up and hold onto them. As your characters accumulate these things, their weight increases making it harder to move if max weight is exceeded. Besides increasing your character’s stamina rating, there are a few things you can do to help minimize the weight issue while still holding on to those precious items.

Updates: We’ve received numerous requests for additional ways to increase carry weight so we’ve added a few others which include items and potions.

Store It

There are a number of chests across Skyrim and those chests can store your items. The trick with storing items in chests is that you should find one that uses a key or that is out of place, hidden if you will. Keyed chests are the best option since they won’t be looted, however it may be more convenient to use a chest which is located in an area you frequent often.

The downside of chests is that you’ll need to keep going back to them to retrieve or swap out items.

Use It

This is the simplest one of all. There are some items which, when used, don’t return. Obviously, using potions or scrolls will remove them from your inventory so use them in battle when possible. Another item is food. When I had to clear some weight from my inventory I realized I was carrying 12 pounds of food. 12 pounds! I ate it all in one shot, saved myself 12 pounds and never gave up a thing. So far, food has never been an issue in terms of health for the character or overall maintenance of stamina. Sure food can have effects, but otherwise there’s no use in carrying it around. Eat it or store it.

Share It

There are several opportunities in the game, at least 3 early on, that allow you to take on a companion on your travels. Those companions can and will carry items you give them. If the item is of some value, they will even use it which is great for assisting in battle. They do have limits, so distribute the loot wisely.

House It

This is another storage option, but one that will require some extra coin as a house can cost $5000. Once owned you can drop and store whatever you like in there. While probably the best option, it is also the priciest and has the same downside as using a chest.

Perk It

If you’re into pickpocketing, you can increase your carry capacity to 100 by learning ‘Extra Pockets’ after you reach level 50 on pickpocketing.

As a temporary fix, you can enchant certain armor with ‘Fortify Carry Weight’ on armor slots gloves, boots, amulets and rings. Temporary only in the fact that you’ll likely want to replace that item with something more useful down the road.

Wear It

Something to consider while roaming and bouncing from quest to quest is a second, partial set of armor. We’re not talking about a complete set, but rather lightweight items that can increase your stamina, thus increasing your carry weight. There are several easy to obtain items that have a bonus to carry capacity attached to them.

If you haven’t already done so, join the Thieves Guild and in return they supply you with a full set of armor. Each have different affects tied to them, but the body armor in particular has a +20 rating to carry capacity. Twenty points can be the difference between leaving an enchanted warhammer behind or carrying home for storage. While there are other items that provide carry capacity, the thieves guild armor is something that can be retrieved early in the game with little difficulty. To start your thieves guild quest, head to Riften. Look for Riften on the southeast part of the map.

Bonus Tip: The Thieves Guild Armor can be upgraded later on in a Thieves Guild side quest. Find Tonilia in Riften or The Ragged Flagon to start your side quest. The armor increases from 20 to 35 extra carry weight capacity.

Potion It

Another temporary solution is to brush up on Alchemy. Through potion making, characters can create potions to increase carry capacity. For instance, a ‘Draught of Strength’ increases carry capacity by 30 for 300 seconds. For all you mathematically challenged, that equals 5 minutes of +30 carry weight. Five minutes doesn’t sound like much, but it should provide enough time to reach a horse or storage location.

Ingredients for ‘Fortify Carry Weight’ potions include:

Creep Cluster

Giant’s Toe

Hawk Beak

River Betty

Scaly Pholiota

Wisp Wrappings

Your Thoughts

How do you store your extra gear and items? Do you have another suggestion for our readers? Let us know in the comments!

If I ever find myself with to much loot I just transform into a werewolf, eating animals to stay in that form, run to my nearest safehouse, stay hidden from the towns folk, wait for 1 hour then slow walk to my chest.

If your traveling companion has reached their carried weight limit then just ask them to do something for you and then point at the object you want them to carry. They can carry unlimited weight this way…

Any dead enemy counts as a container. I’m not sure if they’re as good as locked chests for long-term storage, but you can stuff items into any corpse near the dungeon entrance and pick them up on your way out. (To remind yourself which body it is, try dumping a half-dozen cheap items on the ground around it.) Then when you’ve filled up with as much as you could carry down in the dungeon plus what you left out front:

Drink a strength potion, put on any Carry Weight items you keep handy, and drop low-value items so you can move again. If you can make it to the outside (and don’t find an enemy lurking nearby) before the potion wears off, you can Fast Travel to a city and start selling. (Be sure you head for Whitrun: you don’t want to find a dragon waiting for you there, and since your potion wears off on the way Whitrun has both its smith and the house you can buy within easy crawling distance of the entrance.)

The house is expensive just like everything but, just to the left across the stream from Riverwood and above the Guardian stones is a place called Anises cabin, I robbed the witch that lived there, she attacked me, she’s now dead and my goods are stored in her basement. It also has a place for making potions etc. not sure if this creates problems later in game as im only level 10 but so far so good

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Anything stored in your house is safe, whether in chests or not. The chests ‘out in the world’ (unowned containers) are more or less safe, but remembering their location could be troublesome if that’s the only way you store items. Unowned containers can be robbed.

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If you have high Conjuration get the Dead Thrall spell. Fight and kill someone tough with abilities that complement your style. Load the dead body with whatever you want (no weight limit). Animate the body with Dead Thrall. You now have a tough companion fighting for you while carrying tons of your stuff. The added bonus is that if they get killed in a fight you just reanimate them and you’re good to go. To get your stuff or add more just conjure an Atronach or something and they drop to the ground dead. Search the body as usual. Reanimate them with Dead Thrall. Just don’t lose them somewhere you can’t retrieve them from (mine got stuck in a blade trap glitch once). The only real drawback is you can’t tell them to wait anywhere. They follow until one of you drops dead. Now that’s loyalty for you.